I live in chutz la’aretz. The call I received caught me completely by surprise. My brother from Monsey was on the line.
“What’s going on?” I asked him, detecting a note of urgency in his tone.
“Everything’s okay,” he said, calming me down. “It’s just that Abba said he very much wants for us to meet today.”
“What’s the story?” I ask him.
He told me that there was an incident in out father’s factory that caused him to understand that he needs to delegate more of the business’s management. Although I do not live in Monsey and am not connected to the business, I do work in marketing in my own city, and thus it was important for me to be present as well.
I asked him if it was urgent, because it didn’t sound like such an emergency to me, but my brother claimed it didn’t matter. “If Abba asked us to come, we come,” he reminded me.
Since he’s my older brother, I decided to put everything else aside and to go to Monsey. I myself didn’t really understand why I had been so easily persuaded to leave my home for a long two-hour drive each way, but that’s what happened.
When I arrived, Abba was very happy to see me. I told him I’d understood he wanted us to meet, and he said he hadn’t meant to make me go so far out of my way. He thought we could discuss such matters over the phone, but if I’d already come, that was wonderful. Ima served me cookies, my brother came over to speak about matters both important and trivial, and while we were schmoozing, the phone rang.
It was my good friend on the line.
“What’s doing?” I asked
“Baruch Hashem. I’m in Monsey now, in the hospital.”
“In the hospital?! What happened?”
He related that he had been taken urgently into the ER, and he was alone, without family.
“I’m coming right over,” I told him. “It’s impossible for you to deal with this alone in the hospital. You need someone to be with you. Just imagine – I’m right here in Monsey too! I’ll be with you in a few minutes, im yirtzeh Hashem.”
My parents understood the situation and even urged me to go. “It truly seems that min haShamayim you were sent here so that you’d be able to help your friend,” my father said.
And thus I was zocheh to be a good messenger to be with my friend in his difficult hour, to support him emotionally and to attend to everything he needed in the hospital.
